The Guardship

Chapter 33

THEY WALKED back the way they had come, across the fields and along the dirt paths running beside the wide James River and down the smooth rolling roads. Pockets chinked with coins and silverware and other trinkets stuffed hurriedly into them. Pirates labored under bags filled with the bounty of their raid.

It was a dark night, but they had little difficulty in seeing their path. The flames from the last house they had set off reached far into the sky and danced and leaped across the ripples on the river’s surface in bright flashing patterns, just as LeRois had hoped.

And when the light from that conflagration grew too distant to do them any good they came to the mill, which was still burning well, and then to the other house, and then the house before that, their own destruction lighting their way back.

They returned at last to the first house they had torched that night. It was no more than a heap of glowing embers, but there were embers enough to light the bank of the river where their boats remained fast in the mud.

“Vite, vite, come along, hurry,” LeRois prompted the men. They had covered in their round trip perhaps six miles, and the Vengeances were dragging along, shuffling. The fire had gone out of them. It had been a long night, even for men well used to demanding physical activity, a long night of constant motion, screaming, drinking, destruction.

But it was not yet over, at least not as far as LeRois was concerned. There still remained the most important job, that of ushering Malachias Barrett through the gates of hell.

The heap of debris that earlier that evening had been a plantation house glowed red and orange, and the river picked up the muted colors and threw them back. Any light that might have come from the stars or the new moon was largely blotted out by the haze of smoke that hung over the countryside, a bitter, stinging smoke, smelling of charred wood and burnt paint and the ashes of three generations of tidewater wealth.

They stumbled down the long field, filing past the hillocks with their tobacco plants, and loaded their sacks into the boats. Then one by one they pushed the boats out into the stream and pulled themselves aboard and took their places on the thwarts.

LeRois went last, climbing into the longboat before it was pushed off. He did not want to get his shoes wet. It was not fitting for the capitain to walk through the mud like a pig.

The small crew aboard the old Vengeance had managed to work the decrepit ship upriver and drop anchor just below Hog Island. The Nouvelle Vengeance was at anchor as well, having floated free once the tide had lifted her off the sand.

LeRois grabbed hold of the cleats on the side of the Nouvelle Vengeance and pulled himself up onto her deck. There was no one there to greet him, no one conscious, in any event. Bodies were sprawled here and there, passed out in the warm night air, some still gripping the bottles they had drained.

“Uhh,” LeRois grunted. Let them sleep. Let them all sleep. He would remain awake and vigilant. He would watch, because he knew that Malachias Barrett would come to him once again, and he would send his old quartermaster on that long voyage of the damned. They would all go, if it came to that.

George Wilkenson was surprised at the quality of the horse he was riding, the steady planter’s pace it was able to maintain, the good manners it displayed. He was surprised because it was

Marlowe’s horse, taken right from his stable, the old Tinling stable. George had thought Marlowe knew nothing about horses.

Perhaps he did not. Perhaps it was his Negroes who had trained the beast, just as his Negroes had been responsible for that fine crop of tobacco that he and his father had burned. Free Negroes, who stayed and worked of their own volition. George shook his head at the very thought of it. Marlowe was an enigma, and George was almost sorry that he would never have the chance to fathom him.

He had left the Plymouth Prize shortly after his meeting with Marlowe. Marlowe had actually asked him to stay, suggesting that it would be safer for him to remain aboard the guardship, but that was too much. Coming to Marlowe, begging for his help, was all the humiliation he could endure. Remaining in the man’s protective care was beyond the pale.

Instead, he had done Marlowe a favor by escorting Elizabeth Tinling and Lucy to the Tinling-the Marlowe-house in Marlowe’s coach, which had been sent down for that purpose. He was well armed, Marlowe had seen to that, with a brace of fine pistols and a musket, and he sat in silence on the seat across from the women. No one said a word. They were careful not to meet one another’s eyes. It was not a comfortable trip.

When at last they arrived at Marlowe’s home, having encountered no one on the road, George spoke.

“Might I have a horse? Any will do. I do not know when I will be able to return it.”

Elizabeth glared at him, made no effort to conceal her dislike. “The horses here are not mine to let out, but under the circumstances I think Captain Marlowe would not mind.”

“Thank you.” He turned to go, then paused and turned back. He had the urge to reach out and hug her, an all-but-irrepressible need for some human contact, a touch, an embrace. But he knew the kind of rebuff he would suffer if he tried.

“Elizabeth…I am sorry. I can say no more than that.”

She had looked at him for a long and awkward moment. “I am sorry too,” she had said, then turned and disappeared into the house.

He slowed the horse to a walk as the loom of the fire from the Wilkenson house became visible over the trees. The road he had taken ran roughly parallel to the river, an almost direct route from Marlowe’s home to the Wilkensons’. The last time he had ridden that way was when they had returned from burning Marlowe’s tobacco. Now it was his own family suffering the ravages of the flame.

He turned the horse down the long road, past the oaks, to the front of the house. The second floor had collapsed. The entire place looked more like a giant bonfire than a home, and even from one hundred feet away he could feel the blast of the heat.

He stopped and watched as the fire consumed the only home he had ever known. He imagined his father was in there somewhere. His funereal pyre was made up of all the things that three generations of Wilkensons had struggled to accumulate in that new world, all the dreams of wealth that had first brought them over the wide ocean.

George shielded his eyes from the blaze and looked off to the side of the house. The stable was still intact. The fire had not managed to jump across the fifty feet of close-cropped grass that separated it from the main house. That much at least was a relief, for the Wilkensons’ horses were the only thing left on earth that George cared about.

He flicked the reins against his horse’s neck and the animal headed off toward the stable, taking skittish steps away from the burning house and looking at the fire in wide-eyed fear. Under a less-skilled rider the horse would have bolted already, but George Wilkenson had a certain authority with the beasts. It had always been a source of pride for him, one of the few.

Around the far side of the burning building he caught a movement, a flickering shadow against the yellow and red flames. He pulled the horse to a stop. There was someone there, a figure darting away from the house. He watched the

man, black against the background of the fire. He moved with rapid, jerky movements. It had to be terribly hot so close to the flames.

And then the figure abandoned whatever he was trying to do and raced away from the flames, toward the stable, but George’s vision was damaged from looking into the fire and he lost sight of him.

He swung the horse over to the nearest stand of trees, slid off, looped the reins around a sapling. He stepped across the lawn, toward where the man had disappeared, his footfalls on the grass nearly silent and masked by the crackling fire.

He saw the person at last, just outside the door to the stable, hunched over, his attention on whatever he was doing. George pulled one of the pistols from his belt, one of Marlowe’s pistols, a beautiful weapon, light and balanced in the hand, and stepped closer.

He was five feet away before the man sensed that he was not alone. He turned, his face illuminated by the burning house.

“What the devil…” George could think of nothing else to say. It was the shifty little man whom Matthew had hired to run the river sloop. “Ripley…?”

“Oh, Mr. Wilkenson…” Ripley’s rat eyes darted to the pistol and then to George’s face. His tongue flicked out and licked his lips.

“God, but ain’t it horrible, what they done?” Ripley continued, nodding toward the burning house, his eyes never leaving George’s. “I told your father, ‘You don’t want to have no business with them pirates,’ but your father, he wouldn’t listen, not to no one.”

“Where are they? The pirates?”

“They gone back to their ship, I reckon. Anchored just off the Finch place, down by Hog Island.” Ripley half turned and pointed across the field. He was being very helpful.

“What are you doing here?”

“Oh, well, when I heard, I come to see if I could help, maybe defend the place. I didn’t reckon it would just be aban

doned, but I was too late. I…ah…I tried to save what I could, I got some of it, tried to save it for you and Mrs. Wilkenson and the others, so’s you don’t lose everything…”

George’s eyes moved down to Ripley’s feet. There was a horse blanket lying on the grass, half tied in a bundle. Spilling out of it were various bits of silver service, an old clock with gold inlay, a couple of china cups.

George looked up at Ripley, astounded at the depths of the man’s depravity. “You were looting. You were looting my home.”

“No, no, I was trying to save a few things from them fucking pirates, beg your pardon…”

George raised the pistol up until it was pointing at Ripley’s forehead, just three feet away. Ripley took a tentative step back, and George cocked the lock.

“No, Mr. Wilkenson, I was-”

Those words, that pathetic, lying protest, were the last words that former pirate quartermaster Ezekiel Ripley ever uttered. George pulled the trigger. The gun jolted in his hand, and he had a vague image through the smoke of Ripley blown backward, arms flung out, onto the grass.

The gun dropped to George’s side. He took a few steps forward and looked down at Ripley’s earthly remains, sprawled out flat, dead eyes staring at the sky. Much as Matthew had been.

He had thought about this moment many times, what it would be like to kill a human being. He had always imagined terror, revulsion, guilt. But he felt none of that. Just a vague curiosity, no more. He wondered if this was how Marlowe had felt after putting a bullet in Matthew. He never seemed to have been stricken with guilt or any form of remorse.

George stood over the body and reloaded the pistol. It seemed likely that he would need it again before the night was through. He went into the stable, pushed the stable doors open wide, and opened all of the stall doors as well. If the stables did catch fire, the horses would be able to get out.

He found Marlowe’s horse, mounted it, and rode toward the fields. He paused to look down Ripley’s body one last time. He still felt nothing. He touched the horse’s flanks with his heels and headed off in the wake of the pirate horde.

It was easy enough to follow them. The trail was blazed with burning buildings and markers in the form of discarded bottles and loot dropped or tossed aside along the road that ran beside the river. The mill was all but gone, as was the Page house and the Nelson house. The fires were burning down at last, the flames having sucked all of the life they could from the wood and plaster and cloth until there was no more left to consume.

The Finch house was nearly dark, with only an orange ember here or there, a punctuation of light in that dark, charred heap. There was nothing left to indicate that the huge, smoldering fire pit on top of the small rise had once been a house.

George could smell the now familiar odor of a burnt house, could hear the crackling of the burning timber, but here the crickets were chirping again, and he could smell the woods and the mud near the river as well. Things were already returning to their natural state.

He paused and looked at the remains of the Finch home. He thought of all the times he had danced in those rooms, or played piquet or whist, or sat down to dinner with his neighbors. What would they do now? What would any of them do?

He pulled the head of his horse around and rode off toward the water. He had no plan, did not even know why he had followed the pirates. It seemed a long time since he had had a rational thought; the night had been made up of feelings, instincts, impressions, pushing him along through no conscious decision of his own.

He came at last to the edge of the water. He could see where the pirates had come ashore, the mud and plants trampled by the many, many feet, the long grooves cut in the bank where the boats had been pulled up.

The James River was nearly a mile wide at that point. George could just make out the masts of the ships-it seemed

there were more than one-against the night sky, but their hulls were lost in the darkness.

For a long time he just sat, staring at the dark, skeletal masts with the same morbid disinterest with which he had looked at Ripley’s dead body, the round hole in his forehead. Anyone who heard the tale of his going to plead with Marlowe would think it an act of altruistic humility, but that was not all of it. His family had nothing now, nothing but their good name, and if LeRois lived to tell of his father’s entanglements with the pirates, then that too would be gone. He needed LeRois destroyed, and he hoped and prayed Marlowe could do it.

His eyes moved over to a clump of bushes on the bank twenty feet away. Behind the bushes he knew he would find a canoe. The Finches had kept one there for years, to use for fishing or other recreation. He looked out at the pirates again, then back toward the canoe. Was there anything he could do to hurry the pirates’ destruction along?

The instinct that had been driving him that night forced him to ride down to the bushes, to dismount, to see that the boat was still there and the paddles still lying on the thwarts. He looked out toward the pirate ships. He had no idea of what he might do.

He felt a spark of fear and panic flash through him, but there was something delicious about it, something thrilling and redemptive. He had no thought of dying, because he no longer had any thought of living. He was ruined, he was humiliated, he was a part of the clan that had unleashed the terror on the colony. He was as much a burnt-out shell as his family’s home.

He pushed the canoe into the water, just as he and the Finch boys had done so many times in the past. He climbed in, carefully, and found his balance, then dipped the paddle into the river and started for the other side.